


Fell Into A Bookshop

by fractalgeometry



Series: Nadia’s (probably magical) Queer Haven [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Multi, POV Outsider, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Queer Guardian Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), Queer Guardian Demon Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26141461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalgeometry/pseuds/fractalgeometry
Summary: “You said you were running?” The first man addressed Nadia again. “Any reason?”“Um.”“You’re safe here,” the second said gently, leaning towards her. “No need to worry.”~Nadia’s night away from her family is not going well. Turns out there are homophobes everywhere. But then she somehow ends up in a dark bookshop with two very friendly, very gay people, and the evening starts looking up. It almost starts to feel like she might not be alone in the world after all.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Nadia’s (probably magical) Queer Haven [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1898320
Comments: 42
Kudos: 386





	Fell Into A Bookshop

**Author's Note:**

> I love outsider POV and I love Aziraphale and Crowley watching out for queer kids, so here’s a mix of those things. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Aziraphale, Crowley, the bookshop, and everything else I’ve pulled from canon belong to Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, and anyone they’ve given rights to.

Nadia ran down the darkened alley that had been the closest escape route when the jeering group had come at her, hearing their voices not so far behind. They weren’t afraid of the dark alley, of course. There were lots of them. There was only one of her. 

She tried to block out the words that were pelting down the alley, maligning her looks, and her presumed (but accurate) sexuality. Speculating on her courage, her desires, her _life._ She didn’t want to know what they’d do if they caught up, so she tried to run faster. She’d never get home at this rate. She had to lose them.

The alley spilled out onto a street, puddled with orange from the street lights, dotted with people. Not enough people. Not enough to hide among. She picked a direction at random and took off, dodging the people she passed, cursing her luck. This was supposed to be a safe night. A night to be herself, out of her family’s clutches. To remind her what would be, if she kept up the facade long enough to reach adulthood. To reach freedom. 

The voices weren’t falling behind, and she thought she heard some of them turn on the unsuspecting passers-by that she had dodged. Lovely. She had led them to other people to hurt. She should have just stayed in the alley. 

Someone brushed her sleeve — she couldn’t see if it was one of her harassers or not — and she yelped, jumping sideways so fast that she lost her balance and crashed into the door of one of the shops. The door opened against her shoulder, and she fell inward, landing on the floor just inside. The door swung shut behind her, and she skittered sideways, still on the floor, trying to get out of view and hoping uselessly that the jerks following her hadn’t seen where she went. 

She heard voices outside, faint through the door, but no one came in. After a minute, she drew a slightly deeper breath and looked around the shop she had unwittingly ended up in. 

It looked to be a bookshop, albeit a very dim, messy one. There were books _everywhere,_ not just on the shelves or tables. She couldn’t see very far back; pillars and bookshelves forming walls that cut off sightlines. There seemed to be no one else nearby. 

That was okay with Nadia. She could just stay over here, then, waiting until her pursuers had hopefully gotten bored and wandered off, and then make her way home. 

The temperature of the air around her seemed to abruptly drop. Oh dear. Was this some kind of adrenaline response? She really didn’t want to have to deal with that right now. Couldn’t the adrenaline keep going for a while?

Then someone stepped out of the bookshelves, and _whoops,_ there was the adrenaline. Be careful what you wish for, and all that. Nadia scrambled to her feet, back pressed to the wall, regarding the person. He was tall, and very thin, dressed in a sort of casual-formal mix where the only definite thread was that every article of clothing was black. His hair, in contrast, was very, very red, almost glowing in the dim golden light of the shop. And for some unfathomable reason, he was wearing _sunglasses,_ at night, in a building that seemed to have as little lighting as possible. 

“How did you get in here?” he demanded, jaw set intimidatingly. “We’re _closed.”_

Nadia couldn’t speak for a long moment. Fear was closing her throat and she wasn’t sure she could breathe properly. Finally she managed, “I fell against the door and it opened.”

“Did it now.” The man’s body language was abruptly less aggressive. “And how did you come to fall against the door?”

Nadia swallowed. “I was running-”

“Crowley?”

Nadia jumped as a second man emerged from a different aisle of bookshelves. He was shorter than the first, dressed in a light suit that looked more than a few decades out of date, and somehow managed to look both intimidating and kind when his eyes fell on her. 

“This young person says-” the first man — Crowley? — broke off and looked at Nadia. “Pronouns?”

“What?” she said automatically, before his words caught up to her. “Oh, um, I don’t- she/her, I guess?” 

“Thanks,” Crowley said, glancing back to the other and continuing without waiting for a response. “She says she fell against the door and it opened, and that’s how she ended up in here.”

“Oh it _did,_ did it?” The second man seemed almost delighted. 

“You said you were running?” Crowley addressed Nadia again. “Any reason?”

“Um.”

“You’re safe here,” the second said gently, leaning towards her. “No need to worry.”

“Watch it, angel,” Crowley murmured, almost too quiet for Nadia to hear. “Anybody we need to chase off?” he asked louder.

“I- don’t know,” Nadia said. “I think they left. They didn’t follow me in, at least.” She realized belatedly that she had just admitted to running from someone, but neither man seemed about to point that out. 

“Well, you might as well stay a while, just to be sure,” the as-yet-unnamed shorter man said. “I’ll make cocoa.”

Nadia felt that she should be much more worried about this idea, but it really just sounded pleasant.

 _“Aziraphale,”_ Crowley said, in the tone of one who has said this before. “You can’t just-”

“Oh, of course,” the shorter man — Aziraphale, she guessed, and wasn’t that an odd name? — said. “Assuming you want to stay a bit, of course.”

Nadia _did_ want to stay. She was intrigued by these two odd people and their bookshop, and how they seemed to understand what the other was about to say before the sentence was finished. But… “I don’t want to intrude,” she said.

Aziraphale positively beamed. Nadia wasn’t sure when she’d ever seen someone look so openly pleased. “Not at all! Do come in.”

Nadia glanced at Crowley, who was watching them both with a wryly amused expression.

“Come on, then,” he said to her. “Might as well share what’s got you crashing into random shops late at night.”

So Nadia followed them back through the bookshelves to a comfortably worn sofa and two armchairs. She sat in one and watched as Aziraphale made the promised cocoa.

“Do you two run this place?” she asked curiously. 

Crowley snorted from the sofa. “Do I look like I run a bookshop?”

Nadia guessed this meant “no”, but she couldn’t help saying, “Well, you are here when it’s supposedly closed.”

“The shop is his thing,” Crowley said, gesturing to Aziraphale. “I’m the resident nuisance.”

“Really, dear,” Aziraphale said reprovingly, his back to them. 

“You going to deny it?” Crowley retorted.

“I was referring to your tone,” Aziraphale said, turning to carry over several mugs. He handed one to each of them, then settled onto the sofa next to Crowley. “Now, child, what brings you here?”

“Um,” Nadia said. She suddenly felt like she might cry, sitting here with a mug of cocoa and an eccentric older gay couple. “It’s complicated,” she murmured, and took a sip of the cocoa. It was creamy and flavorful in the way only really well-made cocoa was, and she found herself very glad that she had taken them up on the offer. 

“Don’t have to talk if you don’t want,” Crowley said, his own mug balanced precariously on his knee. “Welcome to if you do. ‘S up to you.”

Nadia nodded, thinking. After a moment, she asked, “Are you a couple?”

It wasn’t the most polite thing she could say, but she really needed to know. If the answer was no, she wouldn’t open her mouth again. If it was yes...she’d consider it.

Her hosts shared a look. After a pause Aziraphale said, “Yes, effectively.”

“So you’re gay,” Nadia pushed, feeling a little reckless.

“In a way,” Aziraphale agreed. He looked at her, and she felt as though he was already understanding what she was trying to figure out. 

“A lot of people don’t like gay people,” Nadia mumbled into her cocoa.

For a split second, Aziraphale looked angry, and she almost panicked. Then Crowley laid a hand on his partner’s knee, and the anger vanished as though it had never been there. “Sure feels like that sometimes, doesn’t it?” Crowley said.

“I was running away from some of them.”

“Ah,” Crowley said. “So there _is_ someone we need to go chase down.”

“You don’t-” Nadia stammered. “They’re probably gone anyway.”

“Pity,” Crowley mused.

Aziraphale gave Crowley a look. “They won’t come in here, at least. I’m surprised they came so close. Perhaps they lost their way.” He sounded almost dangerously innocent.

“So...you don’t agree with them?” Nadia asked. It felt like a stupid question, but she had to ask it.

“Seems weirdly hypocritical for the answer to be yes,” Crowley said dryly. 

Nadia nodded. Sipped her cocoa. Wondered, briefly, why she was feeling so comfortable here. 

Neither of the odd men on the sofa spoke in the silence that followed, seeming perfectly happy to sit in silence with a random girl off the street in their back room. Which was a concerning sentence, put together like that. Lots of things about this evening were concerning if she thought about them abstractly. 

Something about her most recent thought niggled at her. Oh. Men. She remembered how Crowley had stopped to ask her pronouns before they even invited her in. Maybe she shouldn’t be assuming everything she was. 

Her mother’s voice, then, saying something about how gender wasn’t complicated at all and these newfangled kids were destroying the good old something or other. Still, she wasn’t sitting with her mother right now. She was sitting with two strange...people who had just recently asked her pronouns. So. When in Rome, and all that.

“What are _your_ pronouns?” she asked. “Since you asked me, I mean. It seems like- it’s polite, right? I thought you were men, but I’ve been learning things recently, like checking is good.”

“Ah, human conceptions of gender.” Crowley stretched, somehow managing to keep his cocoa from falling off his knee. “I can be a man, sure. Or a woman. Or something else. Don’t really care. Pronouns are pronouns.”

Nadia had heard of people like that, but found herself unsure what to do when actually confronted with one. Was there something she should say? Apologize for thinking he- she- he? — was a man? 

Aziraphale smiled his incredibly warm smile at her. “I generally go with male presentation and pronouns, my dear. Crowley likes to mix it up, but I find that rather a lot of work.”

“‘S way more work to try to stick to one,” Crowley said, again in the tone of one who has made this point before and will continue to do so. 

“So you don’t think- what do you- never mind.” Nadia had rather a lot of questions on this topic, apparently, but figuring out how to ask them in a polite way was definitely beyond her. This evening was getting more surreal by the minute, and she found herself loving every one of those minutes. 

Well. The ones since she got to this bookshop, that is. 

“May I ask how you ended up running from homophobes on a Thursday night?” Aziraphale said after another stretch of silence. “If there is a way we could assist in keeping it from happening again, I would very much like to do so.”

Nadia sighed. “I was just...trying to get some time away. I heard there was a thing for people like m- like you- uh, gay people and stuff — nearby, and I wanted to see what it was like. And then they saw me when I was leaving and I think I sort of panicked.”

“Time away from what?” Aziraphale asked, still gentle and not even close to judging. 

Nadia bit her lip. “Do your families...accept...your relationship?”

Crowley laughed. Tossed his head against the back of the sofa and full-on laughed. Aziraphale looked at him fondly, slipping his hand into Crowley’s in a gesture of closeness that made Nadia almost want to cry. 

“Our relationship…” Aziraphale said, trailing off before he answered the question.

Crowley stopped laughing and looked back at Nadia. “No. They don’t. Simple answer is they don’t. And it took us forever and a half to realize that they don’t have to be the boss of us and start doing what we wanted.”

“Do you talk to them anymore?” Nadia asked. Her voice was small.

Aziraphale’s face was a little less effusive than it had been up to that point. “It is hard,” he said, “to completely stop talking to one’s...family.”

“And sometimes it’s best to distance yourself from them,” Crowley added. “Any particular reason you wonder?”

She got the distinct impression he knew why she was wondering, which was odd, since she wasn’t entirely sure she knew why herself. She shrugged, pressed her lips together, then blurted, “I don’t think I’m straight.”

“I would _never_ have guessed,” Crowley said, sarcasm filling every syllable.

 _“Crowley!”_ Aziraphale gasped. 

Nadia started to giggle. She wasn’t sure why, but something about the two on the sofa exuded safety and comfort in a way that made her feel like everything would be all right. Crowley’s words, which would have instantly subdued her in a different context, felt like an offering, a connection waiting to be made. 

“Sorry,” she murmured, managing to stop the giggles.

“For what?” Aziraphale asked.

Nadia shrugged. Then, because the offering was hanging there, waiting to be plucked out of the air and woven into the connection they were building, she said, “I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“We’re honored,” Aziraphale said, somehow managing to make it sound entirely serious.

“Yeah, that,” Crowley agreed, his tone much more flippant and yet also serious.

They were waiting to see if she would say anything else, Nadia realized. They weren’t pushing, or even asking questions. Hadn’t been pushing at all, the whole evening. And yet...she’d gone out tonight to find people like her. What did it matter, really, if the ones she liked best weren’t in a loud restaurant but a quiet bookshop?

“My mum wouldn’t like it,” she said. “Or my dad. I don’t think they’ve ever imagined I’d be anything but straight.”

“Could they change their perception if you told them what you told us?” Aziraphale asked.

“I don’t know,” Nadia admitted. “I’ve heard stories of parents whose opinions of gay people change when they find out their kid is gay, but from some of the things they’ve said...it’s not a risk I want to take.”

Neither person on the sofa asked her what sort of things. She was glad of it. Then, as the silence stretched, she started to wish one of them would say _something._

“Well,” Crowley said, and smirked at her in a way that indicated her relief showed, “I somehow doubt you’re planning on living with them forever?”

“God no,” Nadia said fervently. “I have one year and one and a half months until I’m eighteen, and I’m already looking into what I’ll do then.”

“You almost sound like you have it counted out to days.”

“Oh, yeah, four hundred and eleven,” Nadia answered promptly, then bit her tongue. It had probably been a joke. 

Crowley laughed again, loud and joyful. “Oh, I do like you, kid.”

Aziraphale looked at his partner, smiling. “I could never have predicted such a thing.”

Crowley rolled his eyes, still laughing, and gestured at Nadia. “Don’t pretend you don’t like her too.”

“I didn’t say that!” Aziraphale said, somehow sounding amused and aggrieved at the same time. “Of course I do.” He turned to Nadia. “When are you expected home? We wouldn’t want to make you late.”

“Uh,” Nadia said, abruptly at a loss. No good lie was coming to mind, and she wasn’t quite ready to tell that particular truth. Gay or not, these were still _grown-ups._

“Oh,” Crowley said, no longer laughing. He elbowed Aziraphale.

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. “Of course. You do have a plan for getting home, right?”

“Yeah,” Nadia said. She did, even if it was a slightly questionable one. Walk home, climb back in her hopefully still open window, and go to sleep. Simple.

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes at her. “I think maybe Crowley ought to drive you home.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Nadia said quickly. Getting into a random male-ish person’s car automatically rang warning bells instilled in her years before. Though it was probably objectively no more dangerous than sitting in a locked building with that same person. 

“It’s no trouble,” Aziraphale assured her, which was amusing, given that Crowley was the one whose driving was being offered. 

Crowley was looking very knowing. “Got anyone you can send a photo of the plate to? I’ll throw myself in for good measure if you want.”

Nadia didn’t, at least not anyone whose texts were reliably private enough that she could be reasonably sure news of her outing wouldn’t spread. Still, it made her feel better to have him ask. She shook her head, then slipped her phone out of her pocket and, as surreptitiously as she could, checked the time. There were rather more zeroes in the time than she would have liked. And really, would she rather brave the streets of London alone at ten minutes to one in the morning, or be driven home by a vaguely eccentric queer person who she’d been talking to for an hour? 

“Are you sure it’s okay?” she asked. “I mean, would you? I understand if you just want to go to bed.”

“I don’t need sleep,” Crowley said, and rose to his feet. 

“You sound like someone _my_ age,” Nadia commented.

“What? I don’t!”

Nadia rolled her eyes. “Sure. That’s exactly what my friend says when I tell him to go to bed.”

“Well, if you don’t _want_ a ride…”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale chided.

Crowley snorted and grinned at Aziraphale. “I’m kidding! Let’s go, Nadia.”

Nadia stood up, setting her cup aside. “Thank you for inviting me in,” she said to Aziraphale. “And for the cocoa. It was really nice.”

“Of course, dear!” Aziraphale beamed. “Come back any time. And drive safely!” he added in the direction of Crowley’s retreating back.

Nadia smiled back, then trotted after Crowley, who had somehow gotten nearly to the door without her noticing.

The street was much emptier than it had been earlier, and though Nadia automatically glanced around for any signs of her earlier pursuers, they were, predictably, nowhere to be found.

“They won’t be back,” Crowley said from where he was opening the door of a very fancy, old black car.

“I’m sorry?” Nadia asked.

“They won’t be back,” Crowley repeated. “One close brush with Fell’s bookshop is enough for a lifetime for their type. Get in.”

Nadia automatically moved to the car and gingerly opened the back door. The car looked so old she was almost afraid to touch it. Even a scratch would probably cost hundreds of dollars to fix. Still, everything seemed to be in nearly pristine condition as she settled into the seat. 

Crowley, still inexplicably wearing his sunglasses, turned on the engine. At least, she assumed he did. She couldn’t see an ignition anywhere, but maybe it was somewhere different in a car this old. 

“What do you mean, ‘a close brush with fells bookshop’?” she asked curiously.

“A. Z. Fell’s,” Crowley said, swerving into the street and stepping on the accelerator. “Aziraphale’s bookshop. You think he takes well to having homophobes running around nearby?”

“Um,” Nadia said. She couldn’t imagine he _liked_ it, but what was there to do, really? Even for a kindly middle-aged gay man?

Crowley glanced up into the rear view mirror and smirked. “Let me guess, you’re thinking about how harmless he seems.”

Nadia wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she stayed quiet.

“Let me tell you, he can be scary,” Crowley continued, apparently unbothered by her silence. “He’s just only scary to people who ought to be scared of a lot more than they are.”

“Huh,” Nadia said.

“You, however, fall squarely on the list of people who he invites in for cocoa. He doesn’t invite just anyone to come back whenever they want, but when he does he means it.”

“Maybe I will,” Nadia said. The night was feeling more and more like a dream the later it got, and she was getting the distinct feeling that she’d have to reevaluate all of her choices the next day.

“You might want to tell me your address, so we actually go to the right place,” Crowley said.

“Oh, yeah.” Nadia bit her lip, thinking, then reeled off an address.

Crowley made a left turn that nearly flung Nadia into the door. “That’s a Tesco.”

Well, dang. “Yeah,” she admitted.

“You’re comfortable walking from there to your house alone?”

Nadia reviewed the route in her head. It wasn’t even a five-minute walk, and she could cut through the alley to get at her window without going near the front of the house. She didn’t think anyone would be looking out the windows at this hour, but keeping to the shadows felt like a good idea anyway. “Yeah.”

“All right then.” Crowley glanced ahead, saw a yellow light a little ways up the mostly empty street, and gunned the engine. Nadia gasped a little, unable to stop the exhilarated grin that came to her face as they sailed through.

“Didn’t Aziraphale tell you to drive safely?” she asked, a little breathlessly. 

“I _am_ driving safely,” Crowley retorted, and took the next turn almost without slowing down.

“Could have fooled me,” Nadia murmured.

Crowley laughed, a joyful whoop. “There’s hardly anyone on the street, even! Piece of cake.”

His enthusiasm was contagious, and really, what was a bit of reckless driving on top of a night of sneaking out of her house and befriending strangers? Nadia didn’t bother to object again, instead relishing the surge of excitement every time the car sped up or swung around a curve.

When they pulled into the Tesco parking lot a few minutes later, Nadia almost didn’t want to get out of the car. What was she going back to? Her repetitive, secretive life of trying not to get into arguments with her parents and reading Tumblr in the dark at night?

Crowley looked back at her. He looked almost like he knew what she was thinking. 

“Go on,” he said. “Come on back when you get a chance. We’ll be around. Besides, it’s only four hundred and eleven days until you’re eighteen.”

Nadia started to laugh. “How did you remember that?”

“Magic.” Crowley grinned back. “Go get some sleep. You actually need it.”

“How do you know I don’t need sleep either?” Nadia retorted.

“You’re a human.” 

“And you’re not?”

He wiggled his eyebrows at her, and she rolled her eyes, laughing again. “Fine! But you sleep too, when you get home.”

“Hmm. I might, at that.” He turned back to look out the windshield, and Nadia reluctantly unlatched the door.

“Thanks for the ride,” she said. “And for everything.”

He looked like he wanted to say something, but caught himself before it slipped out. “Thank me by getting some sleep,” he replied instead.

“Okay.” Nadia slid out of the car and closed the door as gently as she could. Then she waved at the strange, fascinating person in his strange, old car, and trotted off in the direction of the shortcut that would take her to her house.

The alley was dark and quiet, like she had known it would be. A knot of adrenaline formed in her chest as she walked down it, growing as she unlatched the garden gate and made her way to her ground floor window. 

It was open, just as she’d left it, and beyond it her room was dark and apparently empty. Nearly there. 

She vaulted up to the windowsill and slid to the floor as softly as she could. There was no light in the crack under the door, and the house was silent enough that she was pretty sure everyone else was in bed. That was good. If someone had found out she was gone, the house would not be dark and quiet. 

She made her way half-blindly to her bed, and exchanged her street clothes for pajamas by feel alone. The window she left open for fresh air. 

As she settled herself under the covers, it occurred to her that she hadn’t gotten any phone numbers or other contact information for Aziraphale or Crowley. At least there was the bookshop, which she was reasonably sure she could find again, given some time. 

She yawned and curled up. The evening felt a bit like a dream already, but it had certainly been a good one. She wondered, vaguely, what the memory would be like in the morning.

Then she fell asleep, and didn’t seem to dream at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this! I plan to write more about Nadia and Aziraphale and Crowley, hence this being the beginning of a series. I already have a second one in progress, so hopefully it won’t be too long until that’s out too. 
> 
> Leave a comment with any thoughts you have; it makes me very happy. :)


End file.
